It seems that this country's answer for regions plagued with conflict is to send in vast shipments of weapons for distribution to those groups deemed less hostile to our interests. Already the world's largest arms dealer by far, the United States is pouring weaponry into some of the least stable regions on earth. The one that quite naturally gets the most attention is Iraq.

Our original, and still stated, purpose in Iraq was to have a unified country with a national army and police force. The "surge" of 2007 was intended to quiet things down enough in Baghdad and Anbar province to enable the Iraqi government to "step up" so that we could "stand down."

The "success" of the surge thus far is due to three factors that are likely to prove temporary. First, stationing small army or marine units in residential areas has unquestionably reduced violence and increased personal safety. What will happen when our units leave? Second, ethnic cleansing has lowered sectarian strife by turning neighborhoods entirely Sunni or Shia. How will these cleansed neighborhoods fit into an eventual pattern of government? Third, Sunni tribes, especially in Anbar, have been armed by us to police their own areas, particularly being tasked with the elimination of al-Qaeda. How will these tribal militias relate to an empowered national army or police force, should they emerge, and to each other?

Iraq today is clearly not a unified state. It is no longer even split into three distinct regions. With the PKK guerillas active in Kurdistan and provoking responses from the Turks, each region is splintered into several heavily armed factions with independent agendas. As al-Qaeda fades (and it never was more than a minor element in the insurgency), the stage will be set for the civil war to assume a new course. The armed religious and ethnic groups (like the Shia Badr and Mahdi armies) will begin fighting each other in attempts to stake out boundaries of control. National forces are destined to remain impotently dependent upon sectarian support.

Another area of extreme instability is Afghanistan and the adjacent tribal sector of northwest Pakistan. Our main strategy there has been to arm "friendly" warlords who pledge to fight al-Qaeda and the Taliban (with assistance from the relatively small NATO force). Sometimes they have done so, but they have also used our resources to enter the drug trade, fight with each other, and make alliances (often with the Taliban) that increase their influence. The Taliban itself has strengthened while the Afghan government has remained exceedingly weak with its rule confined to a few sections of Kabul.

Now we are about to embark on a new strategy for the largely ungovernable tribal area of northwest Pakistan. The American military has proposed to spend $350 million over several years to increase the fighting ability of the Frontier Corps, a paramilitary organization made up of local tribal members. This corps does not report to the Pakistani army but to the Interior Ministry. We also propose to send a significant number of our Special Forces troops to the frontier area to act as trainers, and to pay tribal leaders who offer to oppose al-Qaeda and the Taliban.

Shipping arms into an unstable area and training a force that has repeatedly been accused of aiding our enemies seems to be a long shot at best. However, it mirrors our effort to arm and train Fatah troops to fight Hamas or to fund the Ethiopian army's takeover of Somalia. Using fear of Islamism or of oil falling into unfriendly hands has led us to support authoritarian rulers, invalidate elections, and arm militia groups around the world.

As our proxies initiate or escalate conflicts in areas as far flung as Central Asia and the Niger Delta, we need to ask ourselves whether shipping arms to them is really a good idea.

After all, Hamas was initially founded with backing from us and the Israelis, who jointly thought that they would make a counterweight to the Egyptian based Muslim Brotherhood. In 1982 Hezbollah was secretly supported by the same pair, who thought it could offset the influence of the PLO then based in Lebanon. Osama bin Laden and a collection of Afghan warlords received weapons and cash from the Saudis and the CIA in the hope that they could cause problems for the Soviet occupation.

Perhaps our record in arms dealing and funding proxy militias should prompt us to consider how soon our present efforts may come back to haunt us.